particularly revealing because it is concerned with a purely secular matter: a woman who becomes a Vestal Virgin is released from paternal power. When we look at the background to theTables, the picture changes dramatically. For many years there had been a conflict between the plebeians and the patrician elite who had a monopoly of state offices including state priesthoods. The plebeians wanted the right to share in these offices, to be able to know what the law was, and to be equal before the law. The patricians agreed to a code of law provided they drafted it. In the event, the plebeians got none of their demands. The patricians retained their monopoly, the code contains only the private law that the patricians were willing to share with the plebeians, and the plebeians still could not know the law because theTwelve Tables did not contain the forms of action. No public or religious law! The code, designed to look like a compromise or even a defeat, was a great victory for the ruling elite.59 Their aim was to remain in control. Another example might be Atatürk’s reform of Turkish private, commercial, criminal law in. The main incentive was purely political: the need after World War I for a peace treaty with the victorious Allies who demanded modernization of Turkish law.60 The Ten Commandments are beyond doubt the most celebrated collection of laws in the western world. They also have a very high approval rating for their quality. Yet they are extremely peculiar. I believe it is possible to understand them better if we approach them 59 See e.g. Alan Watson, The Spirit of Roman Law(Athens, GA, 1995), pp. 34ff. 60 See now Esin Örücü, Critical Comparative Law: Considering Paradoxes for Legal Systems in Transition(Deventer, 1999), pp. 80 ff. and the work she cites. II
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